Marie Antoinette — Volume 06 eBook

CHAPTER VIII.

During July the correspondence of M. Bertrand de Molleville
with the King and Queen was most active. M.
de Marsilly, formerly a lieutenant of the Cent-Suisses
of the Guard, was the bearer of the letters.

[I received by night only the King’s answer,
written with his own hand, in the margin of my letter.
I always sent him back with the day’s letter
that to which he had replied the day before, so that
my letters and his answers, of which I contented myself
with taking notes only, never remained with me twenty-four
hours. I proposed this arrangement to his Majesty
to remove all uneasiness from his mind; my letters
were generally delivered to the King or the Queen
by M. de Marsilly, captain of the King’s Guard,
whose attachment and fidelity were known to their Majesties.
I also sometimes employed M. Bernard de Marigny, who
had left Brest for the purpose of sharing with his
Majesty’s faithful servants the dangers which
threatened the King.—­“Memoirs of Bertrand
de Molleville,” vol. ii., p. 12.]

He came to me the first time with a note from the
Queen directed to M. Bertrand himself. In this
note the Queen said: “Address yourself with
full confidence to Madame Campan; the conduct of her
brother in Russia has not at all influenced her sentiments;
she is wholly devoted to us; and if, hereafter, you
should have anything to say to us verbally, you may
rely entirely upon her devotion and discretion.”

The mobs which gathered almost nightly in the faubourgs
alarmed the Queen’s friends; they entreated
her not to sleep in her room on the ground floor of
the Tuileries. She removed to the first floor,
to a room which was between the King’s apartments
and those of the Dauphin. Being awake always
from daybreak, she ordered that neither the shutters
nor the window-blinds should be closed, that her long
sleepless nights might be the less weary. About
the middle of one of these nights, when the moon was
shining into her bedchamber, she gazed at it, and told
me that in a month she should not see that moon unless
freed from her chains, and beholding the King at liberty.
She then imparted to me all that was concurring to
deliver them; but said that the opinions of their intimate
advisers were alarmingly at variance; that some vouched
for complete success, while others pointed out insurmountable
dangers. She added that she possessed the itinerary
of the march of the Princes and the King of Prussia:
that on such a day they would be at Verdun, on another
day at such a place, that Lille was about to be besieged,
but that M. de J-----, whose prudence and intelligence
the King, as well as herself, highly valued, alarmed
them much respecting the success of that siege, and
made them apprehensive that, even were the commandant
devoted to them, the civil authority, which by the
constitution gave great power to the mayors of towns,
would overrule the military commandant. She was